September 22, 2016 11:16 pm

By AGENCE FRANCE PRESSE, New York, United States, Sep 22 – The United States and Russia convened a last-ditch meeting to save their Syria ceasefire plan Thursday as an intense bombardment left the city of Aleppo in flames.

Secretary of State John Kerry and Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov gathered fellow international envoys at crisis talks in New York for the second time in three days.

The 23-nation International Syria Support Group was to decide if it is worth trying to revive a shaky truce that collapsed on Monday amid bitter diplomatic recriminations.

UN peace envoy Staffan de Mistura said the ISSG would not be meeting again if there was no chance of progress, but diplomats were careful to play down expectations.

“You are radiating what I think is a legitimate pessimism,” Britain’s Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson told reporters before heading to the New York hotel.

Earlier, Kerry had said: “It’s going to be difficult. We’ll see what people are willing to do.”

On September 9, Kerry and Lavrov met in Geneva and agreed to call a ceasefire, with Moscow responsible for forcing Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad’s forces to stand down.

The United States was to pressure opposition rebel forces to obey the truce but both sides cried foul and on Monday this week the Syrian army declared the ceasefire over.

Diplomats believe the US-Russian Geneva process is the only available hope to end the five-year conflict, but Moscow and Washington have fallen out spectacularly.

Russia says Kerry failed to deliver a rebel ceasefire, and was furious when US-led coalition warplanes bombed a Syrian base, a strike Washington says was an error.

Washington in turn accused Russian jets of carrying out a deadly strike on a UN aid convoy on Monday, and Kerry and Lavrov exchanged angry words at the Security Council.

“I listened to my colleague from Russia and felt a little bit like we are in a parallel universe,” Kerry declared on Wednesday after Lavrov tried to blame the rebels.